English writing is regarded as the most difficult task by Chinese EFL learners. Due to the existing problems in present college English writing instruction, teachers fail to provide effective guidance in students' writing process and students report a low level of motivation and confidence in writing tasks. Through purposeful reading discussions…

Currently, the educational system in the Solomon Islands faces tremendous challenges, including how to develop student skills and interest in subjects such as mathematics. The attitudes and beliefs of Pacific and non-Pacific students can impact on their mathematics learning and performance. This paper focuses on the educational implications of…

Working with Korean university-level learners of English, this study provides a detailed analytical comparison of 2 task work groups that were video-recorded, with 1 group scoring very high and the other relatively low based on the results of a Group Work Dynamic (GWD) measuring instrument. Adopting a complexity theory (CT) perspective and…

Some metacognitive mental activities were explored on chemical reading activities as specific judgments called metacognitive judgments. A think-aloud protocol was carried out to fifteen chemistry teacher candidates to express their judgments on chemical reading activities for question posing. Two chemical articles were designed to stimulate these…

Translation of medical texts poses several challenges to undergraduate student-translators due to multiple Arabic equivalents to English medical terms. For medical terms such as "clinical," "intensive care," "polyp," and "osteoporosis" several Arabic equivalents exist. A sample of English medical terms with…

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy (CCSS-ELA) were adopted by approximately forty states (though in some cases, with significant revisions). However, researchers are still trying to understand how teachers are implementing the CCSS-ELA at the ground level--that is, in actual ELA classrooms. The CCSS-ELA call for…

Instructional technology has become a crucial component of public education. Reflected in the college and career-ready standards being implemented across the United States, an emphasis has been placed on preparing students with both the literacy and technology skills needed to succeed in postsecondary education and the workforce. Though a growing…

Instructional design is an important aspect of the learning experience within formal online courses. One way in which online instructional design may benefit students is by increasing their future behavioral intention to use educational materials. This is important because research has revealed that students' use of educational resources is…

Massive open online course (MOOC) learning attracts more and more attention in both the practice and the research field. Finding out what factors influence learners' MOOC adoption is of great importance. This study focuses on learner control, user characteristics and platform difference. Hypotheses and a research model are proposed by…

Online instructors need to avoid unclear and confusing explanations of content, which can reduce the quality of learning. Extraneous load is reflective of poor instruction, in that it directs student effort towards processing information that does not contribute to learning. However, students may be able to manage poor instruction through effort…

Learning progressions (LPs) are hypothetical models of how learning in a domain develops over time with appropriate instruction. In the domain of genetics, there are two independently developed alternative LPs. The main difference between the two progressions hinges on their assumptions regarding the accessibility of classical (Mendelian) versus…

Although vocabulary instruction is a pressing need for postsecondary reading instructors, a minimal amount of current postsecondary scholarship addresses this need, and almost no current scholarship addresses the textbook tradition of morphemic analysis (MA). The present article reviews the literature on MA instruction and argues for teaching MA…

The present study investigated the use of multiple digital media technologies, including social networking platforms, by students while preparing for an examination (media multitasking) and the subsequent effects on exam performance. The level of media multitasking (number of simultaneous media technologies) and duration of study were used as…

This study explores the extent to which topic and background knowledge of topic affect spoken performance in a high-stakes speaking test. It is argued that evidence of a substantial influence may introduce construct-irrelevant variance and undermine test fairness. Data were collected from 81 non-native speakers of English who performed on 10…

Predicting item difficulty is highly important in education for both teachers and item writers. Despite identifying a large number of explanatory variables, predicting item difficulty remains a challenge in educational assessment with empirical attempts rarely exceeding 25% of variance explained. This paper analyses 216 science items of key stage…